Eye on Security: Windows Botnets and Other New Problems
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-03-21 10:49:24 UTC
- Modified: 2010-03-21 10:49:24 UTC
Summary: Assemblage of security news from recent days
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Spammers survive botnet shutdowns
Victims, typically users of Windows machines, often fall victim via booby-trapped e-mail messages or through websites that slip malware onto computers via software vulnerabilities.
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Don't trust that Web Address!
But, that comes with using Windows. What's more disturbing is that these malware-bearing messages are getting to be timelier and better written. It used to be that malware e-mail was badly written junk. You'd never mistake them for a legitimate message. The three messages I mentioned though all looked like they could have been real ones. I'm about as paranoid as it comes in computer security, but the basketball one almost tricked me.
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Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs
Users of the BitDefender antivirus software started flooding the company's support forums Saturday, apparently after a faulty antivirus update caused 64-bit Windows machines to stop working.
The company acknowledged the issue in a note explaining the problem, posted Saturday. "Due to a recent update it is possible that BitDefender detects several Windows and BitDefender files as infected with Trojan.FakeAlert.5," the company said.
The acknowledgement came after BitDefender users had logged hundreds of posts on the topic. Some complained of being unable to reboot their systems.
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Energizer battery rechargers still haunted by trojan backdoor
Microsoft labels the trojan as Arurizer.A and warns that it installs a backdoor on user machines that allows attackers to upload, download, and delete files at will, install additional malware and carry out other nefarious deeds.
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Naming and Shaming ‘Bad’ ISPs
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Panda discovers malware on HTC Magic phone
A Panda Security employee discovered three malware programs on a recently purchased HTC Magic phone when it was plugged it into a Windows computer.
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Malware Found on Another HTC Magic Smartphone
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Vodafone Spain supplies pre-Mariposa'd smartphone (again)
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Vodafone Spain admits 3,000 smartphones shipped with Mariposa
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Malware Infected Memory Cards of 3,000 Vodafone Mobiles
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How the butterfly botnet was broken
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Drudge Report, TechCrunch hit by ad malware
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Estonia Defense Minister: Cyberattacks Will Grow
Others at the conference agreed. A major cyberattack sponsored by terrorists or a state will happen within the next decade, predicted Jerry Archer, chief information security officer with Sallie Mae. "I think within the next five to 10 years we will have a cyberwar that will turn into a shooting war," he said, speaking during a panel discussion at the conference.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- [Meme] Walking Outside the Guardrails of the Walled Gardens Built by Monopolies
- So-called "advertiser-unfriendly" material was never a problem for Wikileaks
- This War Crime Footage, Nothing Political Per Se, Is What They Made Julian Assange Plead Guilty To (War Criminals Not Convicted, Only Those Who Expose Them)
- Wikileaks' Julian Assange: Exposing the US Military Crimes
- 20 Years Passed, Let's Go Even Faster Now
- We are hoping to bring more original stories
- Windows Lost Almost 92% Market Share in Egypt
- From over 99% to just over 7%
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- Links 30/06/2024: LLMs Under Fire and Dictatorship of the Old
- Links for the day
- Microsoft’s Latest Antitrust Scrutiny
- 4 new stories
- Microsoft Layoffs, Mass Plagiarism, and More
- outrage included
- GNU/Linux Climbed 0.25% This Month (in statCounter)
- Around midday on Tuesday we'll start seeing preliminary data for July
- Ilya Gulko Introduces Pollyanna
- "Pollyanna is a web framework that makes it easy to create your own libre social space, such as a social network or blog."
- 'FSFE': Underage Labour, GAFAM Fronting, and Identity Theft to Undermine the FSF's Current Fundraiser
- looking to raise funds at the same time as the FSF
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 29, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 29, 2024
- Links 29/06/2024: Astronauts at Risk, Ukraine Updates
- Links for the day
- Fedora and Red Hat Leftovers
- mostly redhat.com
- Microsoft is Now Googlebombing or Spamming 'Open Source' and 'Linux' to Promote Proprietary Surveillance, Azure
- Notice the title and the image, what's being promoted etc.
- Seychelles: GNU/Linux Doing OK
- Seychelles cannot be considered poor
- Gemini Protocol Isn't Even Remotely "Dead"
- "Lupa knows of 505,000 (half a million!) working Gemini URLs at present, up from about 425,000 this time last year"
- About 10 New Free Software Foundation (FSF) Members Per Day
- The total changed from 46 to 47 while typing the article
- Vista 11 Adoption Unusually Low in Germany and It's Going Down, Not Up
- This is not happening only in Germany
- Kevin Korte on Computers Being Allowed to Make Decisions Based on Cryptic Algorithms and Proprietary/Secret Data
- It uses buzzwords where none are needed
- [Meme] Garbage In, Garbage Out (linuxsecurity.com)
- It is neither Linux nor security, just chatbot-generated slop
- Microsoft-Invaded CISA Spreads Anti-Free Software FUD (as If Proprietary Software Has No Memory Safety Issues), Brittany Day Uses Chatbots to Amplify and Permutate the Microsoft FUD
- linuxsecurity.com became an anti-Linux spam site
- Microsoft Laying Off Staff in an Act of Retaliation and Union-Busting
- retaliatory layoffs at Microsoft
- Gemini Links 29/06/2024: Content Drowning in 'Goo' and LLM Slop
- Links for the day
- In Ecuador, GNU/Linux Adoption Surged From Under 1% to Over 4% in About 3 Years
- Not even counting Chromebooks
- LibrePlanet: Cultivating Backups (of Recordings)
- an appeal to recover some of these talks
- Microsoft/Windows Machines Are Turned Off (or Windows Deleted/Decommissioned) in Web Servers, as the "Market Share" Collapse Continues
- Taking full history into account, this is a decrease of over 90% in some cases
- Corwin Brust Hosting Freedom: A Behind-the-scenes Tour With the GNU Savannah Hackers
- "the "smiling faces" behind it."
- Android at 90% or More in Chad
- Windows below 2%
- David Wilson: Cultivating a Welcoming Free Software Community That Lasts
- "a feeling of shared ownership for all users."
- Julian Assange Might Continue Wikileaks, But Certainly Not Yet (Recovery Time Needed)
- And probably at a symbolic capacity only
- Bringing in 12 Santas and Taking 13 Out (Old Interview With Julian Assange)
- Julian Assange's life inside the Ecuadorian embassy
- Neil Plotnick on GNU/Linux in the High School Classroom
- uploaded to the LibrePlanet instance of MediaGoblin
- Asia Appears to be Fastest to Adopt GNU/Linux
- the home of a considerable majority of the world's population
- Alexandre Oliva's LibrePlanet 2024 Talk About "Software Enshittification"
- in spite of technical difficulties encountered while recording
- What They Used to Do With Mono They Now Do With Systemd (Lower and Deeper Down Than Userspace)
- Now we have a project started primarily by Red Hat (and managed by Microsoft GitHub, which is proprietary) being managed by Microsoft and primarily serving Microsoft and IBM
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 28, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, June 28, 2024
- Links 28/06/2024: Kangaroo Courts and Patents Spam, EFF Still Fighting for CPC's TikTok (a Digital Weapon)
- Links for the day
- Links 28/06/2024: Overton window and Polarization
- Links for the day
- [Meme] In 50 Years...
- Microsoft's Vista 11 will take 50 years to be fully adopted
- Only About 1 in 8 Russian Windows Users is Using Vista 11
- it looks like over the past 12 months Vista 11 hardly grew and it remains very low at around 12% of Windows usage in Russia
- Links 28/06/2024: More Attacks on the Press, More Censorship in Russia
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/06/2024: Christmas Prematurely, Self-hosting
- Links for the day
- IBM: So Long, Suckers. Your Free OS is Now Proprietary. Pay IBM or Else.
- almost exactly a year after turning RHEL into proprietary software
- Vista 11 is Doomed and Despite Lack of Adoption Microsoft Already Speaks of Vapourware ("12")
- "Microsoft has pulled a Windows 11 update after users reported boot loops and startup failures."
- ChromeOS Reaches Highest Share in Years at the World's Most Populous Nation, Windows Now at All-Time Low of 13%
- We're talking about India today
- [Video] "It Is Incredible That Julian Assange Survives"
- There was a positive and mutual relationship between Wikileaks and Dr Jill Stein
- Never Assume That Because the Law Exists the Powerful Will Follow the Law
- Who's going to hold them accountable now?
- Nearly a Month Has Passed and Nobody at the Debian Project Even Attempted to Explain What Seems Like Back-dooring of Debian (and Hundreds of Distros That Are Debian-Derived)
- I can cynically guess that only matters when a user with a Chinese name does it
- [Video] Julian Assange Explains Wikileaks' Logistics
- predating indefinite detention
- IBM Was Never the "Good Guy", Just a Self-Serving and Opportunistic Money- and Power-Hungry Monopolist, Living Off of Taxpayers' Money (Government Contracts)
- The Nazi Party of Germany was its second-biggest client at one point and now it's looking to profit from the work of slaves
- "I Hated Working at IBM. They Were the Most Unfriendly People."
- Don't forget what Watson the son did to a poor woman on a plane
- State of the News (and Depletion of Journalism Online, Not Just Offline)
- Newspapers are not coming back and the Web is not coming back either
- GNU/Linux Consolidates in North America
- Android rising a lot this year, too
- [Meme] More Monopolies Granted While Patent Examiners Die (Overworking for Less Compensation)
- Work more; Get less
- Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) is Taking the New Pension Scheme (NPS) to an International Tribunal (ILOAT)
- SUEPO wants more EPO staff to participate in collective action
- Stella Assange and the Legal Team Speak to the Media a Day After WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrives in Australia
- Published yesterday by a number of mainstream publishers
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 27, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, June 27, 2024
- RIP Daniel Bristot de Oliveira, Red Hat death
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock